An Irish identity

Kooli wrote: »

If one of the United States fought long and hard for independence from the States, don't you think that if someone said 'Are you American?' they would strongly say 'NO I'm X (and don't you forget it!)'

You could compare this today to the people of Barcelona. A good friend of mine is Catalonian, and very proud of it. If you were to ask him if he was Spanish, he'd tell you he's from Barcelona. He tells me that if the Catalonian people were given the opportunity to separate from Spain, that the majority would vote in favour of separation. He wouldn't get offended if you asked him if he was Spanish, but he would assure you he was from Barcelona.

I think a few years ago I might have had this response. After meeting Canadians responding that way about people thinking they were American I realised our accent just sounds a lot like the British one, well mostly the English one as I'm from Dublin.

People nearly always respond well when you say you're Irish, and I guess there's a bit of anti-brit fed into us from history classes and all the Northern Ireland films being pro-IRA

An Irish identity:
Speak English
Immersed in British culture, from tv shows to football.
A adoration for Celebrity Culture(I seen a C list Brit celeb Jade Goody was one of the biggest searches on google sums it up)
Drinking culture like British

That is far too simplistic definition of Irish identity and it ignores the duality of Irish identity.

Yes we speak english and but most speak some Irish and in some cases fluently, additionally, there is the arguement that whilst we speak English, we use the syntax and grammatical structure of the Irish language. For more on this, check out this website: http://www.hiberno-english.com/index.html
Professor Dolan is one of the leading scholars on this subject so it's about as authorative as you can get.

Yes we like football but we also enjoy GAA such as gaelic football, hurling and camogie as well.

The adoration of celebrity culture is global, not just specific to Irish culture and many cultures are in the throes of celebrity worship.

As for TV programmes, yes we enjoy British programmes but you completely ignore TG4 which is specifically Irish, we also watch a lot of American TV as well, which you failed to mention.

You completely ignore the recent traditon of Irish film making and Irish film directors such as Neil Jordan and Jim Sheridan that helps to reveal aspects of our identity back to us. Or Irish writing and theatre that seeks to capture and identify what it is to be Irish, or our identity in the making. We have huge literary giants such as Yeats, Synge, Joyce, Beckett and later on Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney (the two poets have nobel prizes for literature). We have so many writers who have won the booker prize and they keep on coming.

Our relationship with the church is a uniquely Irish thing, yes we are reeling from the effects of the scandals and that is now changing but for a very long time we were a Catholic country and our Irish identity was very closely linked to it, much to our pain and sorrow now. We sadly swapped one oppressor for the other (Britain for the church)

Another aspect of our identity is our sense of begrudgery, I think we suffer from this collective problem quite badly. Anyone who does well when the country is suffering is often castigated, hence why so many of our artists left Ireland, and to be honest it also contributed to emigration as a whole, the smallness of thinking here just drove many away, along with the poverty. The lovely thing about the Celtic Tiger is that begrudgery had subsided but now with the recession I see it rearing its ugly head again.

I can include many other factors that contribute to our identity, one is the love of telling stories, not just folk stories but in general, think of when you are in a group in the pub and how everyone wants to top the others story or the specific form of slagging that we do that leaves other nationalities bewildered and unable to keep up with it.

I would argue that the stereotype of Irishness that is true is our gift of the gab, whether that comes through in story telling, a play, a film or a piece of literature, our richness of language and our verbosity is very closely linked to Irish identity.

donegalfella wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

How about anti-irish?
We're no "secondary" nation, and to say as much is an insult to this great nation.

miec wrote: »

Another aspect of our identity is our sense of begrudgery, I think we suffer from this collective problem quite badly. Anyone who does well when the country is suffering is often castigated, hence why so many of our artists left Ireland, and to be honest it also contributed to emigration as a whole, the smallness of thinking here just drove many away, along with the poverty. The lovely thing about the Celtic Tiger is that begrudgery had subsided but now with the recession I see it rearing its ugly head again.

I think the Brits are fairly good at that too. And I'll bet anyone who's played for the England Soccer team will agree with me! I think irish begrudgery is blown out proportion too. Mainly due to Bono, sure we criticise him but so does the rest of world. South Park dedicated an entire episode as to why the world feels this way about bono!
Theres plenty of examples of Irish success stories not being castigated - Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Michael O'Leary, Gabriel Byrne, Michelle Smith until it was shown there was very good reason to castigate her!Dylan Moran...

TheCandystripes wrote: »

ever see when people talk about irelands contribution to music and they mention westlife and boyzone lol.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this, but is this a discreet example of the "begrudgery" you were talking about? Nicely done, if so.

I'm no Westlife or Boyzone fan, but their success in terms of modern music is well documented. Why wouldn’t they be mentioned when people talk about Irelands contribution to music? Aren't they enjoyed globally by millions?

Edit: actually Westlife have quite an impressive list of accolades!

metrovelvet wrote: »

for a long time in Ireland, it was the ONLY way to get employment, so it created a culture of resignation, of giving up, etc

Can I ask, when exactly are you referring to? Is it the middle ages or some time in more recent history?

But for a long time Ireland was a white banana republic, the blacks of Europe, they were considered second class, much like the Polish.

I'd have thought this sentiment lay more with the English and the Americans, than Europe as a whole, as these two countries would have taken the bulk of our emigrants.
I don't believe France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, or Greece ever saw the Irish as "the blacks of Europe" or "second class".

Yep agree because of Britains domination over Ireland, mainland Europe was shutout from the Irish psyche. I think back in the day in other European countries, the elites would have viewed the country with a sense of curiosity. Like a feral land. Thats harsh but its how elites think.

Not literary Ireland it wasn't. Joyce lived and wrote in Europe, he was loved by most Europeans, and 'Ulysses' was pivotal in creating modernist literature. Becket wrote 'waiting for godot' in French first, he is loved and hailed in france. Synge spent time in France and Germany which influenced his work, ditto George Moore, Yeats spent time in Europe. There was a huge cultural interchange between Irish writers, poets and dramatists with Europe when Ireland was creating its cultural identity from the late 1880s onwards. Our literary traditon is far more european influenced rather than british and it is was an Irish writer (Joyce) according to many scholars who killed the traditional novel.

Joyce also managed to capture the type of begrudery I was speaking of in Dubliners, Exiles (a play) and Ulysses. I haven't read finnegans wake so I can't speak for that novel. Scores of other irish writers have covered begrudergy as well.

On mainland europe(or france at least) there is no real irish stereotypes

It is true that Irish people are known for drinking but we are also known for our rich cultural heritage, many foreign people I know have remarked on this and that when we visit other countries for football matches we know how to behave and conduct ourselves. Again you are giving a very one eyed view of irish identity.